For all Civil Aspirants...

Civil service Prelims Handbook

Albert Einstein's name has become synonymous with genius but his contributions to science might have been cut short had he stayed in Germany, where he was born on March 14, 1879.

It was 1933 and a charismatic politician called Adolf Hitler had just become Chancellor.

Einstein, a Jew, learned that his name was on a Nazi list of people earmarked for assassination and a bounty had been put on his head.

One German magazine even included him on a list of enemies of the state under the phrase: “Not yet hanged.”

He had already been used to being something of a migrant as, by the age of 17, his parents had already taken him to live in Italy and Switzerland, where he began training to be a physics and maths teacher in 1896.

Einstein qualified and became a Swiss citizen but couldn't find a teaching job so began work as an assistant in the Swiss Patent Office in 1901, where he was passed over for promotion because he had not got to grips with “machine technology”.

However, much of his work was linked to the synchronizing of time by mechanical and electrical means, which sowed the seeds that would later transform the understanding of the universe.

His first theoretical paper – on the capillary forces of a straw – was published in a respected journal that same year and by 1905 he was awarded his doctorate by the University of Zurich.

The scientist’s work began to pour out of him – by the end of that year, he published no less than four revolutionary papers on matter and energy; the photoelectric effect; Brownian motion; and the idea that perhaps defined him most of all – special relativity.

Despite the acclaim that he began to accrue, he continued working at the patent office until 1909.

Two years later his work on relativity made him world famous when he concluded that the trajectory of light arriving on Earth from a star would be bent by the gravity of the Sun.

His conclusions ripped up the ideas of Newtonian mechanics which had stood since the 17th century.

They are modest, intelligent, considerate and have a feel for art. [Einstein on the Japanese]

He returned to Germany where he held several prestigious positions, including president of the German Physical Society.

By 1921, his groundbreaking theories had transformed the basics of modern physics and he was awarded the Nobel Prize.

However, it was not given for his most famous work, that of relativity, because it remained too controversial.

Instead, the judges used his explanation of the photoelectric effect to explain the award.

The famous scientist began to lecture worldwide and travelled to Singapore, Sri Lanka, Palestine and Japan, where he spoke before the emperor and declared: “Of all the people I have met, I like the Japanese most, as they are modest, intelligent, considerate and have a feel for art.”

Wherever he went by this stage he was greeted like a head of state or a rock star, with crowds thronging to hear him and cannons fired to salute his arrival.

The rise of Hitler and Nazism persuaded him to move to the US, where he later shed his avowal of pacifism and wrote to President Roosevelt urging him to press ahead with construction of a nuclear bomb to ensure the Germans did not get there first.

There was always with him a wonderful purity at once childlike and profoundly stubborn. [Robert Oppenheimer on Einstein]

He later said this letter was his life’s biggest regret because nuclear weapons had such a fierce capacity for destruction.

He began work at Princeton University and became a US citizen in 1940 (his third passport) where he was a strident critic of racism, calling it America’s “worst disease”.

Albert Einstein died of internal bleeding on April 17, 1955, aged 76, which was marked with headlines around the world.

But his story did not end there - his brain was removed by the pathologist to try to understand what made him so intelligent.

At his memorial, Robert Oppenheimer, the developer of the atomic bomb which Einstein had backed, said: “He was almost wholly without sophistication and wholly without worldliness.

“There was always with him a wonderful purity at once childlike and profoundly stubborn.”

World War II

World War II, which began in 1939 and ended
in 1945, was the deadliest and most destructive war in history. Before the war,
Germany, America, and the rest of the world were going through the Great
Depression. The economy was very bad, unemployment was at an all-time high, and
massive inflation caused money to lose its value. More than fifty nations in
the world were fighting, with more than 100 million soldiers deployed.
Countries like America and Britain were part of the Allied powers. Japan and
Germany were part of the Axis powers.

Second World War was fought from 1939 to
1945. It was started in Europe in earnest on September 1, 1939 with the invasion of Poland by
Nazi Germany, and concluded on September 2, 1945, with the official surrender
of the last Axis nation, Japan.However,
in Asia the war began earlier with Japanese interventions in China, and in
Europe, the war ended earlier with the unconditional surrender of Germany on
May 8, 1945.

The origins of
the Second World War are generally viewed as being traced back to the First
World War (1914-1918). In that war Germany under the ultra-nationalistic Kaiser
Wilhelm II along with its allies, had been defeated by a combination of the
United Kingdom, United States, France, Russia and others. The war was directly
blamed by the victors on the militant nationalism of the Kaiser's Germany; it
was Germany that effectively started the war with an attack on France through
Belgium. France, which had suffered a previous defeat at the hands of Prussia
(a state that merged one year later with others to form Germany) in the
Franco-Prussian War in 1870, demanded revenge for its financial devastation
during the First World War (and its humiliation in the earlier war) ensured
that the various peace treaties, specifically the Treaty of Versailles imposed
tough financial reparations and restrictions on Germany.

A new
democratic German republic, known as the Weimar Republic, came into being.
After some success it was hit by hyperinflation and other serious economic
problems. Right wing nationalist elements under a variety of movements, but
most notably the Nazi Party of Adolf Hitler, sought to blame Germany's
"humiliating" status on the harshness of the post-war settlement, on
the weakness of democratic government, and on the Jews, whom it claimed
possessed a financial stranglehold on Germany. Hitler was appointed
Reichskanzler (Chancellor) on January 30, 1933, by the aged President von
Hindenburg. Hitler's government exercised much of its power through the special
emergency powers possessed by the President under the constitution. Under a
further disastrous clause in the Weimar constitution when the President died,
his office was temporarily assumed by the Chancellor.Hitler ensured his possession of the
presidential powers became permanent and so gained dictatorial control over
Germany.

The Italian
economy also fell into a deep slump following World War I. Anarchists were
endemic, Communist and other Socialist agitators abounded among the trade
unions, and many were gravely worried that a Bolshevik-style Communist
revolution was imminent. After a number of liberal governments failed to rein
in these threats, Italy's King Victor Emmanuel III invited right-wing
politician Benito Mussolini and his Fascist Party to form a government in 1922,
following their largely symbolic Marca su Roma (March on Rome).Within a few years, Mussolini had
consolidated dictatorial power, and Italy became a police state.Meanwhile in Germany, once political
consolidation (Gleichschaltung) was in place, the Nazis turned their attention
to foreign policy with several increasingly daring acts.

On March 16,
1935, the Versailles Treaty was violated as Hitler ordered Germany to re-arm.
Germany also reintroduced military conscription (the treaty stated that the
German Army should not exceed 100,000 men).

These steps
produced nothing more than official protests from Britain and France, for they
were more serious about enforcing the economic provisions of the treaty than
its military restrictions. Many Brits felt the restrictions placed on Germany
in Versailles had been too harsh, and they believed that Hitler's aim was
simply to undo the extremes of the treaty, not to go beyond that. Faced with no
opposition, Hitler moved troops into the Rhineland on March 7, 1936. Under the
Versailles treaty, the Rhineland should have been demilitarized, for France
wanted it for a buffer between herself and Germany. But, as before, Hitler's
defiance was met with inaction.

The first
German conquest was Austria. After Italy had joined the Anti-Comintern Pact,
thereby removing the main obstacle of a Anschluss of Austria, Germany announced
the annexation on March 12, 1938, making it a German province: "Gau
Ostmark." With Austria secured, Hitler turned his attention to
Czechoslovakia. His first order of business was to seize the Sudetenland, a
mountainous area in northeast part of the country.

Italy, facing
opposition to its wars in Abyssinia (Ethiopia) from the League of Nations,
forged an alliance with Nazi Germany, which had withdrawn from the League in
1933. In May of 1939, Italy and Germany thus formed the Pact of Steel, which
deepened their alliance and established a Rome-Berlin "Axis."

Several months
after Germany’s annexation of the Sudetenland, on August 23, 1939, a fateful
meeting occurred in Moscow between German foreign minister Joachim von
Ribbentrop and Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov. Afterward, they
announced publicly that Germany and the USSR had signed the German-Soviet
Nonaggression Pact to prevent hostilities between the two countries.

However, the
ministers kept secret the fact that, in addition to agreeing not to attack each
other, Germany and the USSR had also agreed to overrun the countries that lay
between them. Specifically, they agreed that Germany and the USSR would each
take over one half of Poland, with a further provision that the USSR would take
over Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia without German interference.

Germany’s
invasion of Poland came quickly and with overwhelming force. The attack began
on September 1, 1939, with heavy air strikes followed by a rapidly advancing
ground invasion. Hitler referred to the strategy as blitzkrieg, or “lightning
war.” The object of the blitzkrieg strategy was to shock the opponent so
severely that there would be little resistance, allowing the country to be
overrun quickly, with minimal German losses.

The primary
obstacle to the German invasion force proved to be the Polish capital of
Warsaw, which did not surrender until September 27, after a prolonged siege. By
this time, all of western Poland was firmly under German control. Rather than
rush straight to Warsaw and topple the government Germany’s forces moved
relatively slowly, focusing much of their energy on targets that were neither
military nor political in nature. They sought not just to destroy the Polish
government but also to obliterate the Polish people. In the first days and
weeks of the war, both Jewish and non-Jewish civilians were killed regardless
of whether they resisted. Villages and towns were burned, and fleeing survivors
were ruthlessly chased down and shot.

Just two weeks
after the German invasion began, Soviet troops invaded Poland from the east, on
September 17, 1939. It took them only two days to push far enough to meet German
troops advancing from the west. By this time, Germany had already taken most of
Poland except for Warsaw, which was under siege. Upon meeting the Russian
troops, the Germans handed over large numbers of prisoners and promptly pulled
back to the line agreed upon in the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact.
Retreating Polish armies, unaware that the USSR was part of Germany’s
occupation plan, fled directly into Russian hands.

Britain and
France—which were soon labeled the Allied Powers, just as they had been in
World War I—both declared war on Germany on September 3, 1939, just two days
after Germany began its invasion of Poland. However, aside from basic defensive
preparations, neither country took significant action for several months. This
period of relative calm has been sarcastically labeled the “Sitzkrieg,” or
sitting war—a play on blitzkrieg. Rather
than make an offensive move of their own, the Allies waited for the expected
German attack on Belgium and France. It would not come for many months, until the
late spring of 1940.

After months
of inaction, the first sign that Hitler was again on the move came in early
April 1940. On April 9, German troops simultaneously took Copenhagen, the
capital of Denmark, and landed on the coast of Norway. Denmark gave in almost
immediately. In Norway, although the capital at Oslo was quickly taken and a
puppet government set up, a strong resistance movement supported by Britain and
France continued to fight the Germans for two months. The combat was generally
limited to the less densely populated areas in the north of the country.

After months
of nervous speculation, Germany brought war to Western Europe on May 10, 1940,
with the primary goal of conquering France. While the main French army was
trapped between the two German armies, the British Expeditionary Force (BEF)
was being pushed to the coast near the French port of Dunkirk. With the BEF
cornered with its back to the sea, and with little hope of reuniting with
French forces, the British government decided that the BEF had to be evacuated.
The evacuation, called Operation Dynamo, began on May 27, 1940. It took a full
week to accomplish, using more than 800 civilian and military sea vessels. In
all, more than 300,000 men were brought back across the English Channel to
British soil. The feat was heroic—it was done under nearly constant bombardment
from the Luftwaffe—but it left France completely on its own.

With the
British out of the way, the Germans began their final push against France.During this
time, the British vigorously encouraged France to resist at all costs. The new
British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, even flew to Paris himself to offer
his personal encouragement. At the same time, though, the British government
denied French requests for military assistance, wanting to conserve strength
for Britain’s own defense in the near future.

On June 22,
1940, France signed an armistice with Germany. Hitler insisted that it be done
in the same railway car in which Germany had surrendered to France in 1918, at the
end of World War I. On June 23, Hitler flew to Paris for a brief sightseeing
tour of the occupied city, during which a widely published photo was taken of
Hitler standing against the backdrop of the Eiffel Tower.

France fell
primarily due to mistaken assumptions about how the attack would be carried
out. Germany’s advance through the Ardennes Forest was not anticipated, and
even when French intelligence received word of it, they took little action
because they did not believe that German tanks could make their way through a
dense forest. Thus, the core of the French forces, reinforced by the British,
was sent into Belgium, where the main attack was incorrectly expected to take
place.

After France
fell, the British government was certain that Germany’s next move would be
against the United Kingdom. These fears were confirmed when British
intelligence intercepted coded German radio transmissions that made it clear
that an invasion of Britain was imminent.

The Battle of
Britain marked the first turning point in the war, as it was the first time
that German forces failed to achieve a major goal. The Royal Air Force’s strong
and effective resistance caused Hitler to abandon the idea of invading Britain
and to turn his attention to Russia. It demonstrated to the world that with
enough stubborn resistance, Hitler could be forced back.

On June 10,
1940, Italy declared war on France and Britain, largely because its Fascist
prime minister, Benito Mussolini, had territorial and imperial ambitions of his
own. At this time, Britain had already evacuated from Dunkirk, and German
troops were moving steadily toward Paris—which meant it was too late for
Italian forces to take a serious part in the battle. Hitler himself observed
with annoyance that the Italians were in effect riding on his coattails so as
to share in the spoils without having to take part in the dirty work.Nevertheless,
Germany and Italy were soon allied together as the Axis Powers, and Italy’s
entrance into the war set off a chain reaction that brought war to much of the
Mediterranean region.

By March 1941,
the situation for the Italians had deteriorated so badly that Hitler was
finally forced to step in. This decision raised a new problem, however, in that
neutral Yugoslavia refused to grant German forces permission to cross its
territory. Therefore, on April 6, Germany invaded Yugoslavia using its standard
blitzkrieg method. Yugoslavia surrendered on April 17, and the German forces
quickly moved onward to Greece.

By this time,
Britain had forces on the ground in Greece to help the fight against the
Germans. The British help was not enough, however, and by the end of April, all
British forces had evacuated Greece, and the country fell totally under German
control.

The initial
German invasion of the Soviet Union was known as Operation Barbarossa. It began
on June 22, 1941, after months of delay and years of planning. The general
goals were to gain more land for Germany, control the oil fields of Azerbaijan,
and exterminate Bolshevism—the radical Communism that Vladimir Lenin had
installed in Russia during the Russian Revolution. Moreover, Hitler wanted to
exterminate the “racially inferior” Russian people from Leningrad, Moscow, and
the rest of the western USSR while pushing the rest of the population eastward
beyond the Ural Mountains.

After the
battle, little of the city itself remained, and it would not be reconstructed
fully for decades. Despite the catastrophic losses, the Soviet victory stood as
solid proof to the world that the Third Reich was not invincible.

In the years
prior to the outbreak of World War II in Europe, tensions were also escalating
in the Pacific region. Japan, which had been at war with China since 1937, had
declared openly its intent to take over as much of eastern Asia as it could. It
also had serious ambitions toward taking territory in the Soviet Union. The signing of
the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact in 1939 caused a huge scandal in Japan, as
it directly undermined Japan’s plans.

In the
meantime, the United States was becoming more and more of a problem for Japan.
Throughout the 1930s, the United States and many European nations, suffering
from the Great Depression, enacted high protective tariffs. These tariffs
greatly curbed Japanese exports and heightened the effects of their own
economic depression. The poor economic conditions caused strong anti-Western
sentiment in Japan and were a strong factor in forcing the Japanese invasion of
China.

In July 1939,
President Franklin D. Roosevelt decided not to renew the 1911 U.S.-Japan Treaty
of Commerce and Navigation, which was due to expire in January 1940. Then, on
July 2, 1940, the U.S. Congress passed the Export Control Act. Together, these
two actions effectively eliminated Japan’s primary source of oil, scrap metal,
and other material resources needed for war. Although Japan was still smarting
from the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact, the United States’ actions were
enough to overcome this resentment, and on September 27, 1940, Japan signed the
Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy. The pact made the three nations
official allies.

U.S.
intelligence services had direct access to Japanese coded transmissions, so
U.S. officials were well aware that the Japanese were planning something
against them—they just did not know precisely what. One man in particular,
Admiral Richmond K. Turner, strongly urged that U.S. forces be placed on a
higher state of alert, as he was particularly concerned about the U.S. Navy
base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. During previous U.S. war games and exercises, Pearl
Harbor had proven highly vulnerable to surprise attacks. Although Turner’s
advice was considered, only some of his recommendations were implemented.

As early as
January 1941, Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku developed a plan for attacking the U.S.
fleet at Pearl Harbor and carried out training exercises to prepare
specifically for such an attack. In October, the Japanese emperor, Hirohito,
gave his general approval for action against the United States and, on November
8, approved the specific Pearl Harbor attack plan.

The first wave
arrived at the U.S. Navy base at Pearl Harbor at 7:55 A.M. on December 7, 1941
and achieved complete surprise; only nine Japanese planes were lost. The
primary targets were major U.S. warships, most of which were docked close
together in neat lines. These included eight of the nine battleships in the
U.S. Pacific Fleet, along with several dozen other warships. The Japanese also
targeted six nearby military airfields. A second attack wave of more than 160
planes followed just over an hour later. By this time, the Americans were well
alerted and managed to bring down twenty Japanese planes.

In all, the
attack on Pearl Harbor killed 2,402 Americans, destroyed five battleships
completely, put three more out of commission, sank or seriously damaged at
least eleven other warships, and destroyed nearly more than 180 aircraft on the
ground. The only good luck the U.S. Navy had was that none of its aircraft
carriers were in port at the time and that the Japanese bombers failed to hit
the large fuel reserves in the area.

The next day,
December 8, Roosevelt went before both houses of the U.S. Congress to request a
declaration of war against Japan; after a vote, the declaration was formalized
just hours later. Britain declared war on Japan on the same day. Three days
later, on December 11, Germany declared war on the United States. Thus, the
United States was now at war with both Japan and Germany and able to enter
fully into its alliance with Britain.

While the
United States was becoming embroiled in the war in the Pacific, back in Europe
the true intent of the Nazi armies was becoming increasingly clear. As more and
more of Eastern Europe fell into German hands, the territory became a sort of
backyard for the Nazis, where the ugliest parts of their plan could be carried
out far away from prying eyes. By late 1941, the first Jews from Germany and Western
Europe were gathered and transported, along with many other minorities, to
concentration camps in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Lithuania, Latvia, Ukraine, and
western Russia, where they were first used as slaves and then systematically
murdered. This marked the beginning of Holocaust.

After its
initial attacks on Pearl Harbor and Allied interests throughout the Pacific,
the Japanese navy continued to expand its conquests over the coming months. On
February 15, 1942, Japanese forces took Singapore, which was a very humiliating
defeat for Britain. On March 9, after a series of extended sea battles, the
Dutch colony of Java surrendered. On April 9, the U.S. territory of the
Philippines also fell to Japan. Island colonies, territories, and nations in
Southeast Asia continued to fall one after the other as Japanese forces
exploded across the South China Sea and into the Bay of Bengal, threatening
Burma and even India.

After light
U.S. bombing of the Japanese carriers on June 3, 1942, Japan initiated the
attack early in the morning on June 4, bombing the U.S. base on Midway Island.
American naval planes responded against the Japanese armada in a series of
waves. Although the first American attacks were easily repulsed, a group of
U.S. dive-bombers finally got through Japanese defenses and near three Japanese
aircraft carriers, whose decks were loaded with freshly fueled aircraft
preparing for takeoff. The American bombers managed to hit the planes on all
three carriers’ decks, setting off a chain of explosions that engulfed the
ships in flames and set off ammunition stores in the lower decks of the giant
ships. All three carriers were put out of commission and were eventually
scuttled by the Japanese themselves. That afternoon, a fourth Japanese carrier
was damaged beyond repair.

The Battle of
Midway was over by the end of the day. In all, the United States lost one
aircraft carrier, one destroyer, nearly 150 airplanes, and just over 300 men.
The Japanese toll was far worse: four aircraft carriers, along with more than
230 airplanes and more than 2,000 men.

The nature of
the war in the Pacific changed dramatically during the first half of 1942.
Japan had begun with a strong offensive but quickly overextended itself by
conquering most of Southeast Asia. Furthermore, Japan underestimated the U.S.
Navy and took a risky gamble in its attack on Midway. Japan’s losses at Coral
Sea and Midway forced it to shift into a defensive mode. Never again would
Australia or the U.S. mainland face a serious danger from Japanese attack.
Although the war in the Pacific was far from over, for the rest of the World
War II, Japan’s struggle would remain a fight to maintain the territory it had
already conquered, rather than an aggressive campaign for further expansion.
Eventually, Japan would gradually lose all of these earlier gains.

On January
12–23, 1943, U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister
Winston Churchill met at Casablanca in French North Africa (present-day
Morocco) and decided that they would accept nothing but an unconditional
surrender from Germany in order to end the war. Following the conference, the
two leaders sent a telegram to Soviet premier Joseph Stalin, informing him of
their decisions and reaffirming their commitment to work together with the USSR
in defeating Germany.

From November
28 to December 1, 1943, Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin all met together for
the first time, at a conference in Tehran, Iran. The three leaders discussed
detailed plans for the Allied invasion of Europe, which Churchill and Roosevelt
had decided to postpone at the Casablanca Conference earlier that year. The
invasion would be code-named Operation Overlord. Stalin was frustrated by the
delay, but Churchill and Roosevelt insisted that the extra time was needed to
sufficiently degrade Germany’s military strength. At the end of the meeting,
Stalin committed the USSR to enter the war against Japan once Germany was
defeated.

Japan’s
conquests in Southeast Asia during the first half of 1942 extended as far west
as Burma. Britain, along with its colonial armies in India, took responsibility
for containing this portion of the conflict. The British campaign did not go
well, however, and on March 8, 1942, the Burmese port of Rangoon fell to Japan.
This setback was a particularly bitter loss for the Allies, as it had been a
primary supply point and the site of a crucial base for the British Royal Air
Force. By May, the Japanese had driven the Allies back across the Indian
border. During the rest of 1942, British-Indian forces launched minor
offensives into Burma, but with little success.

It was only in
mid-1943, when the Allies organized a new command structure in the region—the
Southeast Asia Command—that they made any substantial progress in driving the
Japanese back. Under this new command, the British cooperated with the Chinese
to advance on the Burmese border, while U.S. and British special operations
forces went behind enemy lines to cut communications and create chaos in
general. A major focus of the campaign was to capture the town of Myitkyina,
which was a principal Japanese communications post. There was a prolonged
struggle for the Myitkyina, which finally fell on August 4, 1944. Another goal
was to secure the so-called Burma Road, which linked Burma and China but was
blocked by Japanese forces. The Burma Road was reopened in January, 1945.
Finally, the Allies recaptured Rangoon on May 3, 1945.

The Allies
fought fiercely throughout 1944 and 1945 to free the many other South Pacific
island groups that Japan had seized earlier in the war. Many of these islands
had formerly been territories of the United States, Britain, or other Allied
countries. The largest of the island groups included the Marshall Islands, the
Marianas, the Philippines, and the Ryukyu Islands. The battles took place on
land, on the sea, and in the air.

One by one,
the Allies liberated Japanese-controlled islands until the last obstacle
between Allied forces and the Japanese mainland were the Ryukyu Islands, which
included Okinawa. However, each battle was more intense and more costly than
the previous one, which led military commanders to begin rethinking their
strategy.

The Battle of
Okinawa was the last large-scale battle in the Pacific and the most intense of
the island invasions. Unlike Iwo Jima, Okinawa had a large civilian population,
which became one of the great tragedies of the battle.

U.S. forces
began amphibious landings on April 1, 1945. Japan had more than 100,000
soldiers lying in wait in a series of fortified defensive lines. The Japanese
believed that the Allied weakness would be its large fleet of naval vessels
anchored offshore. As a result, they planned a massive series of kamikaze
attacks on these ships—suicide missions in which Japanese pilots crashed their
fuel- and bomb-laden planes into targets—with the goal of destroying the ships
or forcing them to abandon their troops on land. However, these kamikaze
attacks did not do nearly as much damage as the Japanese had anticipated, and
the U.S. fleet was able to remain in place and continue to offer air support to
the troops on the ground.

The battle
lasted for two and a half months, until June 21, and cost nearly 19,000
American lives. The Japanese losses were even more sobering: more than 100,000
Japanese soldiers were killed, while the civilian death toll was estimated to
be 80,000 to 100,000.

At the same
time that war was going on in the European and Pacific theaters, conflict also
escalated in North Africa, primarily as a result of Italy’s aggression in the
region in 1940 and 1941. One of the primary flash points in North Africa was
the key port of Tobruk, Libya, which changed hands between the Germans and the
British several times and was the site of several major battles. In November 1942, Tobruk fell to the
British and remained under their control for the rest of the war.

Following the
Axis defeat in North Africa, the Allies pursued them to the island of Sicily.
On July 10, 1943, U.S. and British forces began Operation Husky, an invasion of
the island using troops deployed by gliders, parachutes, and boats. Many of
these landings were disrupted by high winds, making it difficult for Allied
troops to regroup once on the ground. During the first few days, the invaders
encountered significant resistance around Sicily’s main airfield, but it was
quickly overcome. On July 22, the Sicilian capital of Palermo fell to the
Allies, and Sicily was secured.

The day after
the fall of Sicily, Italy’s Fascist ruler, Benito Mussolini, was overthrown by
a peaceful coup, and Italian officials promptly began approaching the Allies
about an armistice. Prior to Mussolini’s ouster, U.S. and British forces had
planned an invasion of the Italian mainland, and the sudden turn of events took
the Allied leaders by surprise. Although Italy officially surrendered to the
Allies on September 8, 1943, the Allied invasion of Italy proceeded as planned,
as there were still a large number of German forces stationed in the country.

In sum,
Italy’s participation in World War II provided little strategic benefit for
Germany; in fact, it actually hindered the German war effort by diverting
German forces from more important tasks. All of Italy’s actions were undertaken
at the whim of its dictator, Mussolini, whose decisions became so erratic and
potentially costly that his own underlings eventually decided to overthrow him.
Indeed, the battles that resulted from Italy’s initially frivolous and aimless
campaigns became increasingly devastating. The campaign in North Africa
ballooned into a huge endeavor that cost tens of thousands of lives, and the
battles on the Italian mainland between Allied and German forces proved even
more devastating.

Germany’s
defeat at Kursk in July 1943 was almost simultaneous with the Allied invasion
of Sicily, and Hitler was forced to withdraw some generals and forces to fight
the new threat in Italy. This multi-front war began to take a serious toll on
Germany’s capability to control the territory it had seized over the previous
four years. As Soviet forces advanced farther west during early 1944, the
German military leadership also had to prepare for the expected British and
American invasion of France. Consequently, Germany withdrew still more forces
from the collapsing eastern front. Although Hitler was still far from giving
up, his conquests were clearly in decline and his war machine gradually
collapsing.

The invasion of
France was launched early in the morning of June 6, 1944—the famous
D-Day—barely a day after U.S. troops had liberated the Italian capital of Rome.
Overnight, roughly 20,000 British and American airborne troops had been dropped
by parachute and glider a short distance inland of the Normandy coast, ordered
to do as much damage as possible to the German fortified coastal defenses.
Meanwhile, over 6,000 ships were making their way across the English Channel to
deliver a huge expeditionary force onto five separate beaches between Cherbourg
and Caen. The first wave alone brought 150,000 Allied soldiers to the French
shore, and over the coming weeks, more than 2 million more would enter France
via the Normandy beaches—to this day the largest seaborne invasion in history.
Opposing the invaders were thousands of German troops manning the
fortifications above the beaches.

The first day
of the invasion was costly for the Allies in terms of casualties—especially at
one landing point, Omaha Beach—but the Germans were vastly outnumbered and
rapidly overwhelmed by the incoming forces. The German high command still
believed that a larger invasion was imminent at Calais or elsewhere, so they
withheld reserve forces in the area from moving against the Normandy invaders.
The Allies therefore accomplished nearly all of their set objectives for the
first day, which included fully securing the landing areas.

By mid-August 1944, most of northwestern
France was under Allied control, and from there, the Allied advance moved
rapidly. Hitler ordered the evacuation of southern France, and German troops
also began the process of evacuatingParisitself. At almost the same time, Soviet troops
invading from the other front first crossed Germany’s eastern border.

Even as it
became inevitable that France would fall to the Allies, however, the Nazi war
machine continued deporting French Jews to Auschwitz and other extermination
camps without letup. A few days later, on August 25, Allied forces entered
Paris, by which point all remaining German troops had either evacuated or been
taken prisoner.

During the
second half of 1944, the Nazi empire gradually imploded as its enemies invaded
from east, west, and south. Supplies and manufacturing dwindled on a daily
basis. The once-mighty Luftwaffe had some of the best military aircraft in the
world but lacked fuel to fly them and parts to maintain them.

Far separated
from reality, Hitler placed his last hope of winning the war on the latest
developments of German technology. These developments were both impressive and
real but were too late and too poorly executed to change the outcome of the war
or even delay it by much. Among Germany’s most fearsome new weapons were two
missiles, the V1 and the V2. The V1 was the world’s first cruise missile, the
V2 the world’s first weaponized ballistic missile. Other German innovations
included both jet- and rocket-propelled aircraft. However, nearly all of these
innovations were still experimental in nature and not truly ready for effective
use in combat. German scientists were also busily working on the development of
an atomic bomb, but the war ended before they could succeed.

Throughout the
fall and winter of 1944, Soviet forces slowly but steadily made their way
toward Germany through Eastern Europe. The brunt of the assault was
concentrated on Poland, where most of the Nazis’ concentration camps were
located. By early November 1944, the German S.S. was trying frantically to
dismantle these camps and hide evidence of the atrocities that had taken place.
The Nazis forced those prisoners who were still living to march on foot
westward to Germany. On November 20, Hitler himself retreated, abandoning his
staff headquarters at Rastenburg along the Polish-German border and relocating
to Berlin.

On April 12,
1945, U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose health had been failing for
some time, died of a cerebral hemorrhage at his vacation home in Georgia. The
United States saw an outpouring of grief, as Roosevelt had been president an
unprecedented twelve years and, in addition to being an effective commander in
chief and diplomatic leader, had almost single-handedly rallied the American
people through the hardships of the war. Vice President Harry S Truman
succeeded Roosevelt as president.

Just days
after Roosevelt’s death, on April 16, 1945, the Soviets began their final
offensive against the Third Reich. Over the coming days, more than 3,000 tanks
crossed the Neisse River, assaulting Berlin’s outer defenses while Allied
aircraft bombed the city from above. On April 20, Hitler spent his birthday in
an underground bunker and soon resigned to kill himself when the city fell.
Although imminent defeat was obvious, Hitler not only refused to allow his
troops to surrender but also insisted that the conscripted civilian army was to
defend Berlin to the last man.

On April 25,
the Allied armies advancing from east and west met for the first time, when a
small group of American and Soviet soldiers met at the German village of
Stehla. The hugely symbolic meeting was marked by celebrations in both Moscow
and New York. On April 28, the former dictator of Italy, Benito Mussolini,
under arrest since his ouster nearly two years before, was executed by Italian
partisans and hung upside down in the center of Milan. Two days later, on April
30, Adolf Hitler killed himself in the bunker in which he had been living since
the beginning of the month. Later that evening, the Red Army hung a Soviet flag
from the top of the Reichstag, the German parliament building in Berlin.

Early on the
morning of May 7, 1945, General Alfred Jodl signed the official surrender on
behalf of all German forces, which went into effect the next day. Some sporadic
fighting continued in the interim, particularly in Czechoslovakia. During the
course of May 8, nearly all remaining German forces surrendered, and that
night, additional members of the German high command signed a formal surrender.
The Western Allies thus celebrated May 8, 1945, as V-E Day (Victory in Europe
Day). Because some fighting between Soviet and German forces continued into the
next day, May 9 became the official Victory Day in the USSR.

During the
summer of 1945, American scientists succeeded in completing a working atomic
bomb, which was tested a single time, on July 16, at a remote location in New
Mexico. Scientists around the world had theorized about the concept of such a
weapon for years, and active research on its development had been taking place
not only in the United States but also in Nazi Germany, Japan, and the USSR.
The American effort, which was conducted with substantial help from Canada and
Britain, was code-named the Manhattan Project. Shortly after the July test, the
Truman administration began seriously to consider using the bomb against Japan.
Eventually, Truman made the difficult decision to do so, in spite of
considerable resistance from U.S. military leaders. Despite the fact that the
bomb would kill tens of thousands of innocents, Truman felt that it would
ultimately save both U.S. military and Japanese civilian casualties that would
inevitably result from a ground invasion of Japan.

The first
atomic bomb was dropped from a B-29 called the Enola Gay on the morning of
August 6, 1945, onto the city of Hiroshima. The blast obliterated most of the
central city, killing 80,000 in a single moment. By the end of the year, 60,000
more victims would die from radiation poisoning, and thousands more would die
in the years to come, from cancer and other long-term effects of the radiation.
It is estimated that the total death toll from Hiroshima was well over 200,000.

The immediate
reaction to the bomb in Japan was one of total incomprehension. All
communications with Hiroshima were lost, and rumors quickly spread that the
city had vanished in some kind of cataclysmic explosion. Yet Japanese military
radar had indicated that only a few isolated planes had been in the area. The
Japanese would learn the truth sixteen hours following the explosion, when the
U.S. government released a public statement explaining what had taken place.
Three days later, on August 9, a second atomic bomb was dropped on the port
city of Nagasaki with similarly devastating results.

The day before
the Nagasaki bombing, the Soviet Union entered the war against Japan and
commenced an attack on the Chinese province of Manchuria, which was still held
by the Japanese. The combination of the atomic bombings with the potential
threat of a full-scale invasion of Japan by the USSR was enough to remove any
hope that Japan may have held for continuing the war. On August 15, 1945,
Emperor Hirohito announced Japan’s capitulation in accordance with the Potsdam
Declaration. A formal surrender was signed on September 2 aboard the battleship
USS Missouri.

It was the
largest armed conflict in history, spanning the entire world and involving more
countries than any other war, as well as introducing powerful new weapons,
culminating in the first use of nuclear weapons.

The war
ravaged civilians more severely than any previous conflict and served as a
backdrop for genocidal killings by Nazi Germany as well as several other mass
slaughters of civilians which, although not technically genocide, were
significant. These included the massacre of millions of Chinese and Korean
nationals by Japan, internal mass killings in the Soviet Union, and the bombing
of civilian targets in German and Japanese cities by the Allies. In total,
World War II produced about 50 million deaths, more than any other war to date.

The questions pattern in both the above papers is Choose the
correct answer type.

Prelims Paper I:

This paper covers a wide range of topics such as History,
Geography, Economy, Polity, Environment Science, General Science, Science and
Technology and Current Affairs.

While preparing for General Studies one could focus on both
Prelims and Mains parts as they both go hand-in-hand.

Preperation plan what I have deviced is:

i. Finish reading all the NCERT books (from VIII to XII) for
the above mentioned subjects, it lays the foundation (If somebody doesn't feel
comfortable with any of the above mentioned topics, then they could start with
VI standard books)

ii. Choose any one of the subjects which one feels
comfortable, let's take History(I am comfortable reading History), as one
already has a broad idea after reading NCERT books, now it is time move
further, so read Spectrum Series - A brief note of Modern History(read
it twice) then, go for Bipin Chandra's book - India's Struggle For
Independence and if futher interested you could read Modern
Indian History by Mohammad Tarique (he is one of the Civil Service
trainers and also in his book one could find more inclination towards muslims
so one could easily understand the politics during that period). Have a copy of
India's Struggle For Freedom(a very small book) by
P.N. Chopra - it has all the events year-wise like a gist, it could be
used as a reference to recollect the flow of events.

iii. Then, I chose Polity -- Indian Polity by Laxmikant is a
good book to start to understand Polity clearly. Read this book atleast twice
to get a clear picture. Then, go for a little advanced book - Introduction
to the Constitution of India by D.D. Basu. One must for sure have The
Constitution of Indian by P.M Bakshi (It serves like a chutney for
Idli),any coaching centre, anywhere in India would start teaching Indian
Polity from this book and they also instruct students to carry this book to the
class.

iv. Let's look at Economy now -- Economy is something where
most of the students find it difficult to understand the number of terms. Hence
first read 'The Indian Economy by Sanjiv Verma'(a very small
book which explains terms with examples), then once comfortable with the terms
go for Indian Economy by Ramesh Singh.

v. Geography(a dreadful subject for me): For Physical
Geography go for 'Certificate Physical and Human Geography' by
GOHCHENGLEONG and for Indian and World Geography, read Indian
and World Geography by Majid Hussain.

vi. For Environment Science read any of the Coaching
centre's material that would be more than enough. You could find these
materials in most of the Stationary Shops or Xerox shops located near the
Civils Coaching Centres in any city. ( For instance, I get all the materials of
Vajiram and Ravi, one of the best coaching centres in Delhi
from a local stationary shop in Hyderabad)

vii. NCERT books would be enough for
General Science

viii. For Science and Technology and Current Affairs, one
must read The Hindu newspaper regularly.

Apart from the above subscribe for Yojana and
Kurukshetra Monthly Magazines released by Government which give a very
good explanation of various Government's policies. Also, subscribe any of the
magazines among Pratiyogita Darpan or Civils Chronicle etc.. I
prefer Pratiyogita Darpan as it has a detialed analysis of the important news
from last month's newspapers.

Prelims Paper II:

It tests one's ability in Comprehension, Verbal,
Quants and Logical Ability. One could go for any of the aptitude
coaching centres material say TIME, Career Launcher, IMS, Byjus.
If somebody has CAT materials, then those will be more than enough. I don't
think one requires coaching for Paper II. Focus on Grammar, Vocab and Reading
Comprehension part in Verbal. In Qunats be thorough with basics of different
topics such as trignometry, Geometry, Progressions, Statistics, Time, Speed and
Distance, Time and Work, Probability, Permuatations Combinations etc to name a
few.

MAINS:

If one completes all the above mentioned reading for General
Studies, then Mains Gerneral Studies papers would be a cake walk for them.

PAPER-I

Essay: Candidates will be required to write an essay on a
specific topic. The choice of subjects will be given.
They will be expected to keep closely to the subject of the essay to arrange
their ideas in orderly fashion, and to write concisely. Credit will be given
for effective and exact expression.

PAPER-II

General Studies- I: Indian Heritage and Culture, History and Geography
of the World and Society.

PAPER-III

General Studies- II: Governance, Constitution, Polity, Social Justice
and International relations.

This paper will include questions to test the candidates’
attitude and approach to issues relating to integrity, probity in public life
and his problem solving approach to various issues and conflicts faced by him
in dealing with society. Questions may utilise the case study approach to
determine these aspects.

Paper-VIOptional Subject

Note: Also, one could try to get the notes
from any of the best coaching centres of Delhi.

Vajiram and Ravi is one of the best coaching centres in Delhi.

Interview:

One must know more about their own state and also the issues
prevailing there.